A little piece of advice from your mama.
When you decide to wake Mama up at 1:35 a.m. with the sole reason being that you think you need a Dora the Explorer Band-Aid on a non-existent boo-boo, it would serve you well not to then ask me to please not breathe on you because my breath “is a little bit stinky”.
Since I just wrote about singing the wrong lyrics to songs, I have to share this with y’all.
There is a song I love right now called Strong Tower by Kutless. I put it on a CD and gave it to Gulley because I knew she would like it. She told me the other day that they listen to it in the car all the time and her little boy absolutely loves it.
The chorus goes, “You are my strong tower, shelter when I’m weak…”
The other day, Gulley was out walking with her husband and their two boys. Her little boy starts singing with great enthusiasm, “You are my strong tower, sausage when I’m weak…”
Her husband pointed out that their son’s version does make sense, because nothing will give you a little bit of energy like some protein in the form of a processed breakfast meat product.
If any of y’all watch The Bachelor and come on, admit it, y’all know some of you do. I am going to give you the greatest gift a Bachelor viewer can receive. In fact, before I discovered it, I had pretty much stopped watching the show. But now that I know I have this to look forward to every Tuesday, it has once again made The Bachelor must see T.V. Where else can you watch catty women compete for a chance to marry an Italian prince raised in New Jersey?
Don’t judge me for my viewing habits people, I’ve never once claimed to be an intellectual.
So with that disclaimer, click on this link for the greatest Bachelor recaps EVER courtesy of Lincee, who is from Texas so y’all know she must be funny.
Barb at A Chelsea Morning tagged me for this meme and I really like it. It’s hard to come up with the memories because there are so many, so these are the moments that came to mind. I’m sure I’ll think of other things later and wish I’d mentioned them. But for now, here they are.
1. Favorite Memory of your Mother?
One thing I’ve always loved about my mama is that she can be spontaneous. I remember going to visit her one weekend while I was in college and a big ice storm was blowing in. The newscasters were warning everyone to stay off the roads and just stay home if you could avoid going out. Well, always being wise and cautious, we decided that if we were going to be stuck inside the rest of the weekend, we better get to Walmart and stock up on some things while we still could. We walked up and down the aisles for at least an hour and a half loading up our cart with essentials like new makeup and bunny rabbit houseshoes. It’s just a fun memory of the two of us laughing together.
I remember when we got home there were about a million messages on the answering machine from my Nanny who was worried to death about us and we had to call her back and explain that we weren’t in peril, but had just been at the Walmart. I think she wanted to kill us both which made us laugh even more.
Another thing I’ll always remember about my mama is how well she took care of us when we were sick. She’d make me a comfy little spot on the couch and fix me some cinnamon toast or anything else I wanted. This probably caused me to be more than a little bit of a hypochondriac because I loved all the back scratches and pampering I got when I wasn’t feeling well.
2. Favorite Memory of your Father?
I have great memories of going to stay at my dad’s house when I was younger and he would let us play Colecovision or Blind Man’s Bluff (in the house, which tells y’all he didn’t have a lot of breakable stuff) until late at night and then sometimes we’d all camp out in the living room to sleep.
I will also never forget how irritated he was with the baby nurses at the hospital the night Caroline was born. He watched them clean her up through the window and was so annoyed at how rough he thought they were. It was just the beginning of his love for Caroline and a small glimpse of what a wonderful grandfather he is.
3. Favorite Memory of your Siblings?
I have one younger sister and she is almost 4 years younger than me. When I was little, I was scared of the dark so we shared a room. Some of my favorite memories are of the two of us staying up late talking as I shared my 5th grade wisdom with her and told her about the dog eat dog world of junior high. We’d scratch each other’s backs, play games and pretend to be asleep if my mom came in the room.
I’ll also never forget that she and her husband came over when I was in labor with Caroline and took my car to get vacuumed out. It was a true act of love because it was hotter than blue blazes outside. I can be a little OCD (see post below) and in spite of my labor pains was obsessed with the fact that I could not bring my new baby home from the hospital in an unvacummed car.
4. What one skill would you like to wake up tomorrow and be able to do (though you’d never learned it)?
I wish I could sew. I would love to be able to make cute outfits for Caroline. I adore looking at fabrics and imagining all the possibilities, but I can barely sew a button on.
5. Which one of your dreams has come true?
I always dreamed of being happily married and having a family of my own. God has done more than I asked or imagined and I’m grateful.
This was a fun one. If you decide to do it, leave me a comment so I can come visit!
Have a great day!
Since I can tell y’all anything, I have a true confession. I really am a little OCD. I tend to get a little obsessed about things. There is really no rhyme or reason to what my obsession of the week will be, it just depends on what’s going on.
One thing that is consistent though, is my obsession with decluttering my house. I can go along for days and be just fine. There can be papers on the kitchen island, toys in the living room, the playroom can be a complete disaster and I’m okay with it…for a while.
But once I start to get a little stressed about something or Caroline has already thrown 3 fits and it’s only 9 a.m. I start to suffer from what I like to call clutter anorexia. Y’all know how you hear that one of the reasons people become anorexic is to gain control of something in their lives? That’s like me, but with cleaning up clutter. All of a sudden I need those papers off the island IMMEDIATELY and if you’re drinking from a glass you better have it in your hand or it’s going straight to the dishwasher and those Legos in the living room need to be back in the playroom this instant.
I’ll wait until Caroline isn’t paying attention and I’ll walk stealthily into the playroom and load up a grocery sack to send off to the McDonalds Happy Meal playground in the sky. I need order restored to my little corner of the world. I need to feel in control of something.
Doesn’t this make y’all want to come visit?
Anyway, I know that I have this in me and I try to keep a reign on it and not inflict my sickness on the other members of my household, although P will tell you that he has been the victim of me throwing away more than one important piece of paper. So far, Caroline hasn’t seemed to notice that My Little Pony now only has one hairbrush instead of an entire set, but apparently she does know her Mama well as the following story will prove.
Friday night she went to spend the night with Mimi and Bops. They are currently in the middle of replacing their back patio, so it is a huge mess right now and Caroline hadn’t seen it since they started the demolition. When they walked into the house, Caroline immediately saw the destruction through the glass doors and put her hands on her cheeks and kept shaking her head and saying “Oh dear me, Oh dear me, Oh dear me” and then she said “My mama is not going to like this”.
I originally posted this on August 13, but am reposting to participate in Lauren’s at Created For His Glory tour of testimonies. To read more testimonies, go visit Lauren here.
I grew up in church, so I can’t remember the first time I heard the story of the Prodigal Son. It was just another Bible story like Noah and the ark, Joseph and the coat of many colors, or Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. I never gave it much thought.
As a teenager, I slowly turned away from the Christian foundation I had been given as a child. I had always been just on the fringe of being really popular because I didn’t drink and go to all the parties, and by my junior year I was sick of it. I jumped in with both feet and pretty quickly found myself dating one of the most popular boys in school, going to all the good parties (you know the ones that involved parents being out of town and kegs of beer), and rebelling from all I knew to be right.
My downward spiral continued throughout high school and well into college. I knew what was right, but I was so stubborn. As I became more and more unhappy with the choices I was making, I started looking for answers. Finally, one night during my senior year in college, I picked up No Wonder They Call Him the Savior by Max Lucado.
His account of the prodigal son rocked me to my core. I had never before understood how much God loved me, how much He wanted me and how His grace completely covered every mistake I had made.
The next week I started attending a Bible study called Breakaway led by a student named Gregg Matte (who is now the head pastor of First Baptist Church in Houston). I walked into the room feeling a little intimidated. A guy named Chris Tomlin (maybe y’all have heard of him) started leading worship and sang a song called Grace Flows Down. Y’all I cried like a baby, not just a few tears but a full on ugly cry.
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